A Book GIVEAWAY (Woot!), JIT for the Holidays

Yo! Who has you covered this holiday season with a brand new, free book? A totally awesome book from real parents featuring true stories about challenging kids, kids with “invisible” disabilities. A book that will let you know YOU ARE NOT ALONE, as we cry with you and share what works and doesn’t in our families.

Answer: ME!

You’re welcome.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, ETLBHTR features a story from me. Me. ME ME ME 🙂 You can buy it at 30% off the cover price between now and January 20th, just in case you don’t win.

So, here’s how to enter:

1. Submit a commit to this post sharing something awesome about one of your kids. Bonus: if you share a parenting success. Extra Bonus: if your story involves an “invisible” disability, like ADHD, for example. Super Extra Bonus: If you submit multiple entries.

2. Extraordinary Out of This WORLD Bonus: tweeting, blogging, or Facebook posting about my Giveaway (just be sure to let me know by some method — tag me (Pamela Hutchins, Author — I think you have to “like” my page in order for that to work, maybe?) in the Facebook post, mention @pameloth in the tweet, or use your blog link as a Comment Luv to another comment you make to this post).

3. I shall diligently read your entries and pick a winner. There’s no random to this. I’m gonna rank the entries in the order I like best, then add 1 point each for Bonus, Extra Bonus, and Super Extra Bonus. AND the Extraordinary Out of This WORLD Bonus.

4. Sit back and wait for me to announce the winner (Sunday, December 18th), whereupon I will ship it to the destination of your choice. Heck, I’ll even autograph it and giftwrap it if you’re gifting it. That’s just the kind of crazy-helpful person I am (sometimes). Warning: I am a crappy but enthusiastic present-wrapper.

4. You, in appreciation of your copy of ETLBHTR, may choose to blog a review, tweet about the book, or talk about the book in a Facebook post. No obligation, but it would be a totally nice way to say thank you.

So…what are you waiting for, a gold-plated invitation? Get to commenting, retweeting, posting, and blogging!

And Happy Holidays’, y’all.

Pamelot

p.s. Is this your first visit to Road to Joy? If so, you might want to click around in the readers’ fave posts, in the right column –>

Or, use the topic links in the menu below my banner to find what interests YOU.

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27 Comments

I have told you before about my Megan and how it took us so long to figure out why she did the things she did. But knowing what we love here is easy. This is my favorite story about her and so indicative of why she is so amazing. When she was about eight years old, we were living in a tiny cottage in England. One morning on the way to school I asked her what she wanted for Christmas. She didn’t hesitate. “I would like a horse,” she said. I thought about my response before just dashing her hopes and finally said, “Sweetie, I don’t think we could have a horse. We don’t really have a place for him to live. So, what else would you like for Christmas.” She was very quite for a few minutes as though she was really considering all of the possibilities. Then she said, “I think I would like a saddle, for when I DO finally get the horse.” My Megan is one of the most positive and upbeat people I know. And I know you only asked for one story but I have to give another. When she was in third grade and was failing in every area at school, we were told we could move her back to second grade right in the middle of the year. We were not sure how she would respond to this so we approached her carefully and asked. She gave us the biggest smile and said, “That would be awesome. It would mean I would have twice as many friends.” She is now in 9th grade and tells me all the time that she was right. She has twice as many friends as most kids her age.

I love talking about my kids, so this is a really easy one to enter. The only hard part is not taking up pages and pages of your website….hahahaha. I Love all three of my kids more than anyone will ever know, but I am going to leave a comment about our youngest….River. He is almost 2 years old and each and every day he does things to make me laugh so hard my belly hurts. At our dinner table he always seems to find a way to get all of us laughing, and we love it.

Hi Pamela; I would like to throw my hat in the ring and enter your giveaway. My sons are grown and neither had ADHD. However, my younger son was misdiagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma (a very serious cancer with life expectancy short) at the age of 14, and that threw us into a frenzied flurry of extreme proportions. There was three weeks in between the first, incorrect diagnosis, and the final, correct diagnosis of chondroblastoma, a progressive disease, but not fatal if monitored up until the mid 20s. He is now 29 and, thank God, free and clear of all symptoms of the disease he did, indeed, have. So, 15 years ago, life went from near total devastation and despair to hope and exhiliration and thanking everyone for all their prayers in a matter of weeks. Life has been hard for me and my partner the last couple years, but having gone through nearly losing one’s son makes everything else pale in comparison.

So that’s my story. Thanks for reading. No worries if I don’t win, because I will be buying the book anyways.

I know that I cannot win AND its really hard for me because I could write about any of our 5 amazing kids and have lots to tell. However, for this one I am going to choose to talk about the oldest, Steven.
Steven graduated at the top of his finance class, magna cum laude and works at Raymond James Capital in Tampa. These things I am of course proud of, but what I am really most proud of is that he has faced an incredible amount of adversity over the last few years. Enough that would have crushed a lot of lessor people. Some of that adversity came from his own choices but so much of it has been just an incredible string of bad luck. What I am so proud of is that he has fought though it, continues to fight through it, is making good choices and starting to see some good things happen.
I know that his future is indeed very bright, he deserves it, and I am so proud of him that he has weathered the storm in the way that he has.

For those of you visiting the site, even if you do not enter please go take a close look at the book, it is very cool and could be really helpful to someone (friend/family/coworker) that is dealing with similar challenges in raising kids.

Congrats to you Pamela on your story in the book. I’ll share one of my oldest, Lucas. Luke and Clark shared similar experiences on the island with ADD related incidents. We continue to fight the ongoing “Did you take your medicine” “Don’t forget to take your medicine”. I’ve left his medicine container out in plain sight, I’ve taken the pill out and placed it on the counter, at his suggestion I placed it on the table. Finally I think I found the solution — I bungee corded the refrigerator door shut. (I know my boy likes to eat, no meds slow him down there!) Now when he has to take the time to un-bungee cord the doors, he then just has to turn and set the bungee cord down right next to his pill bottle and take his meds! Seems to be working so far. I sat and contemplated that wonderful solution last week when I went to go pick him up from school to take him to his doctor’s appt to have his broken arm rechecked (and we had spoken about the appointment the night before AND I had sent him a text before school got out reminding him where I”d be) only to find out that Luke was on the bus on his way over to his Dad’s house because he had forgotten to NOT get on the bus that day!!!!! Today I had to take his exemption card for exams up to the school so that he could turn it in, because somehow they weren’t going to count it while it was laying on the stairs at our house — I did this while I also picked up his I-Touch he had taken away 2 days ago for texting during class! Needless to say, the I-touch is in my possession for awhile! Gotta love them tho!

Something awesome about my kid? She has a photographic memory. This is diametrically opposed to any parenting success I could extol. Instead, I will dash my chances of winning by saying that her photographic memory combined with my early morning-jolted-out-of-bed-because-the-cat-ripped-my jewelry-board-off-the-wall-induced-Tourettes-Syndrome has resulted in a series of unspeakable parenting failures. But, I’m working on that- Perhaps, that is the parenting success. Will tweet your give-away! 🙂

Well, dang; lots of good stories. 🙂 My most recent would be my “Clark”‘s response when I asked him why he hadn’t turned in 2 overdue projects to his APUSH teacher (who was extending him a tremendous amount of grace). He assumes a very hang dog and somewhat bewildered expression and slowly shakes his head. “I don’t even know.”
To which I want to yell and rant: “how can you NOT know?” Mom of the year moment.
And then there’s the time a couple of years ago, when I went upstairs after hearing a rhythmic banging going on, only to discover he was throwing his hunting knife into his bedroom wall. As if it were a tree. Not out of anger or frustration, but just…taking target practice. The gaping hole that’s evidence at least of his good aim is patched but not painted. 🙂

Such a collection of awesome stories, I LOVE the bungee cord (Rene), and the I-touch reminds me of the current I-Pad situation in our house. And throwing the hunting knife into the wall of his bedroom (Heidi) is also a classic.

Love, love, love your blog (and I am not sucking up)! I love talking about both of my kids, but here I will focus on my 14 year old, 8th grade son. After a long middle school road (elementary school was a breeze), he was finally diagnosed as ADHD Inattentive earlier this year. Patrick is not usually impulsive, so one of the funnier stories about him was when he decided to chop down a tree in our yard several months ago. We live in suburbia, so all the trees were left there for a reason. Nevermind that… The neighbors had professional tree removal and it looked ‘fun’ and ‘easy’, so Patrick picked a tree in our side yard and with an audience of boys, proceeded to attack the tree with a very sharp axe. No worries about bloody ER trips or which house/fence/car/person the tree fell on. Fortunately he didn’t get all the way through the tree with his buddies. Since said tree was ruined, my husband made Patrick take the tree the rest of the way down and chop it into 4 ft pieces to be picked up at the curb. Hopefully hard labor will discourage more of this?

All kidding aside, I love Patrick for his kindness, fabulous sense of humor, love of animals, intelligence, athleticism, and the friend that he is to others. I can’t wait to get regular hugs again, but for now I’ll celebrate that Patrick has embraced getting professional and tutoring help and is working on his invisible challenges and bringing his confidence back to previous levels. I see more and more glimpses of Patrick’s terrific personality through the raging hormones and teenage brood-mode, and that gives me hope that everything will be ok. Thanks so much for your parenting insights and all the laughs!

I’d like to nominate my Dad to “worst Dad (of the year) ever” title. When I was 8 years old, we traveled by train, him, my 6 years old sister and I. He wanted to get some snacks (or maybe something to drink too) and decided to go to the restaurant wagon with my sister and left me in my seat to watch over our 5 suitcases and hand luggages. I remember getting more and more inpatient while waiting for them for HOURS until we got to our final destination, and still no father and sister. So I decided to get off the train, asking for some help with the luggages, and people helped me down the train without wondering why I was alone. Luckily I decided to go to one of the offices at the train stations and I told them about my problem. It turned out that right after they entered the restaurant wagon, the train got separated, the front part (with me) continued on to the original destination, while the back went to a different city. It was all clear, they had a signs for it too. So they got off the train and waited for the next train to get on and come to where I was. I am not sure when and how he found out about me sitting and waiting for them there. All I can tell you, that it was the longest waiting time in my life. Luckily I was “clever” enough and remained calm instead of panicking. My Dad is still totally lost…

I’m so impressed about your book. I’ll facebook share it! I too have a fourteen year old son with ADHD. Last year in November, after a horrible time in the public school system, we decided to take him off meds and out of school. I began homeschooling. (Something I’d told the universe i’d never do.) A year later I can honestly say I’ve come to love homeschooling. The time we spend together is priceless and I’ve gotten to know him in a whole new way.